Not content with the reputation of a soldier second only to that of his great father, Matthias, ascending the throne at the age of fifteen, and giving immediate evidence of intellectual and governing qualities of a rare precocity and order, quickly ripened into a scholar and the most liberal patron of the arts in the world of his day. This great and singular man, who on the battle-field endured the hardships of the meanest of his soldiers; who, disguised, entered the camp of his enemies again and again, or calmly took his observations amid a rain of bullets and spears, whose justice passed into a proverb, and who was a rigorous administrator of finance, had a love of luxury, matched by no contemporary, that would have sapped the energies of another man, and a delight in purely intellectual pursuits and discussions that rounded one of the most versatile and grandly equipped characters known to history. He established and personally disciplined a body of foot soldiers--the Black Troop--modelled upon and equal to the famous Janissaries of Turkey, conquered the Czechs, and captured Vienna, driving out Frederick, the German Emperor, forcing him to take refuge in a wagon drawn by oxen, and to beg from convent to monastery like any common mendicant. The court of this ardent soldier became the rallying-ground of scholars and artists, who not only lived on his bounty, but were raised to the highest positions in the royal household. He spent his hours of leisure in day-long arguments with the scientists and savants who had deserted all other courts for this most enlightened and fascinating of monarchs, or lying at ease on a couch covered with a golden tapestry embroidered with pearls, in one of the most splendid libraries that any mortal has ever possessed. This library, sacked with the rest of the palace by the Turks after the battle of Mohács, was contained in two immense rooms, whose walls were covered with carved shelves of precious woods and tapestries of velvet embroidered with gold. The books, collected by Matthias, and in many cases written for him, numbered ten thousand. They were inscribed on white vellum, illuminated by the most accomplished masters of the art, and bound in colored skins set with precious and semi-precious stones. On the cover of each volume was a miniature of Matthias and his coat-of-arms. The furnishings of the Palace of Buda, its objects of art, many made from gold or silver and of a great size, the tapestries, the pleasure-rooms, the hanging gardens of his several palaces, were marvels of beauty and costliness; and the embassies which he constantly sent to the various courts of Europe so surpassed the efforts of other monarchs in extravagance that his resources of wealth alone struck despair to the hearts of those who may have meditated an assault upon his kingdom. When about to take a second wife, Beatrice, daughter of the King of Naples, the splendors and luxuries of Buda were augmented